


some turn to dust or to gold

by weekend_conspiracy_theorist



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 1800 words of me getting emotional about what it means to be a legend basically, F/F, Wingfic, also I've never actually watched arrow so, also it's kind of a fix-it for the Lisa Snart Problem in LoT, this is a fic about a character for whom I have seen about thirty minutes of screentime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 08:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5911279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekend_conspiracy_theorist/pseuds/weekend_conspiracy_theorist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's more interesting, dear, the truth or the legend?</p><p>Or, the story of the White Canary, hundreds of years down the line and directly in the moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some turn to dust or to gold

**Author's Note:**

> ahahahahaha so I love wingfics and I wanted to write about Lisa and Sara, yet this is only sort of about either of those things
> 
> title from Centuries by Fall Out Boy
> 
> happy femslash february? sort of?

"Have you ever heard the story of the White Canary?"

 

"They told us about her in history, I think. She was the one with the sonic cry, right?"

 

"Oh, but you haven't heard the _story_."

 

"I guess not."

 

"They say her wings were blacker than the black of a shadow cast on a moonless night."

 

"My teacher said they weren't even really black at all—just a dark grey."

 

"Well, did your teacher tell you that she would leave a single feather behind, slipped in the mouth of her kills, so that those who were next on her list—"

 

"She refused to kill people!"

 

"What kind of an assassin would refuse to kill people?"

 

"She was a vigilante, Ma; not an assassin."

 

"Oh, I see. You're talking about the other one. The _Black_ Canary. Of course, the White Canary was Black, first."

 

"There were two?!?"

 

"Oh, yes. Two sisters, according to some, but not everyone believes that. The second one, the one your teacher told you about, she took over the mantle when the first one died."

 

"Oh."

 

"No, there's no need to be sad. You see, _she came back_."

 

***

 

Black wings are bad omens.

 

That's what everyone says—that they spell bad luck for their owner, worse luck for those who cross their path. Black wings, people claim, are the wings of bottom feeders and carnivores, of crows and of vultures. (And of blackbirds, but no one would mention those as they dragged their children out of the path of the Lance sisters with disgust and distrust heavy in their gazes.)

 

Sara's wings had been dark and glossy, purer black than any other wings in Starling, and she would throw up her chin, tighten her jaw, a defensive blaze of insecurity in her eyes as she dared passersby to comment.

 

But when she comes, gasping and screaming, out of the Lazarus Pit, her wings are sickly white—battered, perpetually stained and matted no matter how hard Laurel tries to groom them. Sara never truly believed her wings were bad luck, but then they changed color when she came back from the dead, and she's not sure what that means.

 

(She laughs herself hoarse, tears on her cheeks, as Laurel pats her own soft brown wings with soot before taking to the streets.)

 

***

 

"What do you mean she came back?"

 

"She was resurrected by the second Black Canary, which is part of why people think they may have been sisters."

 

"How'd she get resurrected?"

 

"No one knows."

 

"Well, what happened after that?"

 

"No one knows that either. History holds so many more records of the second Black Canary—she was a member of the Justice League in its heyday and co-founded the Birds of Prey, after all. Some people think… well, it just sounds silly when you say it out loud."

 

"Come on, Ma."

 

"Hmm, all right. Some people say the White Canary became a time traveler."

 

"You're right, that does sound silly; time travel wasn't even invented back then."

 

"It's hard to say whether or not it was true. Time has warped the details time and again."

 

"What do you think?"

 

"I don't think it really matters whether or not it's true."

 

"Really?"

 

"Oh, yes. What's more interesting, dear, the truth or the legend?"

 

***

 

Messy wings are a sign of a messy life.

 

People say that, sometimes, when they're judgy fucks with nothing better to do. Messy wings, people claim, show laziness and a general disrespect for your own body, but even more than that they show isolation. (Cleaning your wings on your own is a near impossible undertaking, by nature of their placement on your back, and ever does the loner become lonelier when society chooses to shun them.)

 

Sara never put much effort into her wings before she died. Laurel would straighten something out for her if she needed, then sometimes Nyssa would, down the line, but on the whole they took care of themselves—or maybe black just hid blood a lot better than white.

 

(That's certainly true of the uniform.)

 

Jax is the first person on the _Waverider_ to notice how she struggles to keep them clean, but Kendra is the first to offer her help, sometime after Carter is dead but before Lisa joins the crew.

 

Sara closes her eyes and tries to relax as Kendra's fingers comb carefully through the feathers, straightening one here, adjusting one there, but she can still feel the tension hard and hot in the line of her shoulders. (Death and destruction and mistake after mistake still stretch ahead of her, compounded by their impact on time; her life isn't any less messy for her wings being neat.)

 

***

 

"I don't think you're telling this legend very well."

 

"I started somewhere in the middle, didn't I? But that doesn't really matter; it's the middle that's interesting, and the ending that's important."

 

"Tell me the rest, then. Chronologically, preferably."

 

"There was a man, they say, for whom death was nonexistent and violence was a way of life. This man sowed destruction everywhere he went, and he was destined to become very powerful and spread his destruction far and wide—unless someone stopped him."

 

"The White Canary!"

 

"Yes, and no. She was just one of the people working against this man; he had time and experience and immortality on his side, you see, so it was not her fight alone."

 

"Who else was there?"

 

"Firestorm, the Atom, Hawkgirl—you've heard of them, haven't you?"

 

"They went on to join the Justice League, didn't they?"

 

"That they did."

 

"Were there other people there, too?"

 

"Mhm. There was also a man from their future, whose name has been lost to time, and a trio of criminals—Heatwave, Captain Cold, and Golden Glider."

 

***

 

In modern society, there is absolutely no reason for a person to actually use their wings to fly.

 

Such goes the claim whenever a child, face still round and eyes bright with mischief and possibility, flexes their wings thoughtfully, standing on the edge of their roof—perhaps with a sibling carefully arranging a layer of pillows on the ground, just in case. There are planes and trains and automobiles, the exasperated parent explains, and most peoples' wingspans can't support them for long, anyway.

 

Humans just aren't built for flight (no matter how frustrated evolutionary biologists get when the fact is brought up), the parents say, so there's no reason to bother trying. (Steadfastly, they ignore their own memories of concentrated brows and papers flying about as they furiously attempted to gain even a few inches of altitude.)

 

Kendra and Carter are special—their wings, blessed by their gods as they lay dying in their first life, are bigger, more powerful than any naturally occurring. And until Len's younger sister joins the team, Sara'd never seen a normal human fly.

 

Well. _Glide_.

 

Lisa joins them sometime in 1945—how she got there, she seems to have no interest explaining, but the way she smacks Len upside the head and whispers in his ear says she's the very same sister he'd left behind in 2016. She's Sara's kind of girl, with dark lips and a darker past and a right hook that takes a man twice her size down with one swing.

 

But it's her wings, elegant and wide and- so Len tells her, as she's staring in awe as Lisa jumps off the edge of the building, laughter tearing from her lips, and guides herself through the air- those of a golden eagle, that catch Sara's attention.

 

***

 

"I think I've heard those names before."

 

"The tour guide told us about them, the last time we were at the Flash Museum."

 

"They were Rogues?"

 

"The founding Rogues, it could be said. But when they were recruited by the time traveling man to help save their future, they went with him."

 

"Why?"

 

"I'm not sure. Maybe they wanted the chance to do something good in life, more likely they thought it would open up opportunities to them that they could exploit later. All that really matters is that they did."

 

"So what happened with the evil man? Did they win?"

 

"They fought him over and over again, throughout one time and then the next. They lost to him, time and time again, and they began to get desperate—only Hawkgirl could kill this man, you see, and that made everything harder. Plans had to be formed around her and her alone, and any time she got hurt, or any time they failed to get the man into position for her to kill, they had to abandon the time altogether."

 

"Did they ever run into themselves?"

 

"Once or twice. They almost ruined their own lives a few times when they ran into younger versions of themselves, on varying degrees of purpose."

 

"How'd they win, in the end?"

 

"Oh, they finally learned how to work _together_."

 

***

 

Murder is a sin.

 

People have disputed morality and ethics time and time again, talking themselves in philosophical circles as the rest of humanity carried on their lives with little care. Bentham's hedonistic calculus turns murder into a possibility, should it bring more pleasure than pain; Sartre simply hands you the gun and shrewdly tells you to make your own choice. But to Kant, the rules of ethics, which include murder as unconscionable, are ironclad.

 

Unbreakable.

 

Sara wonders what he'd think about killing an immortal man with the purpose of saving an entire world from enslavement. If his philosophy would break under the weight of seven billion people's lives, full and largely without fear. Of course, it doesn't really matter, because Kant is dead and so is Vandal Savage.

 

Droplets of red slip from her wings to the floor in a staccato rhythm, and Lisa's hand slides into hers, squeezes tightly, briefly. Her lips are twisted into something that's neither a smile nor a grimace, and Sara squeezes her hand back.

 

"How's that for legendary?" Lisa asks, prods the pile of ashes with one toe, and Sara spins her around, tugs her in tight.

 

(It's relief that's shaking her shoulders as she presses her nose into Lisa's collarbone, not broken sobs. And it's also not compassion that wraps Lisa's wings carefully around them both, warm and tight and heedless of the blood that smears into them.)

 

***

 

"What did the White Canary do after that? Is that the end of the story?"

 

"Some people say she joined her sister's crusade in Starling City, but I don't believe that at all."

 

"What _do_ you believe?"

 

"That she kept fighting her _own_ fight, of course."

 

"Even though the evil man was dead?"

 

"There are always evil men."

 

"And the others kept fighting with her?"

 

"Not all of them, of course. They returned to their jobs, their families—the Justice League. But Glider, I think. Glider stayed by her side."

 


End file.
